Bridges

 One book that still turns up surprisingly often on the poetry shelves of charity bookshops and other places where unread books pause on their way to the recycling centre is The Testament of Beauty by Robert Bridges (born on this day in 1844). Its continuing presence is proof of its immense erstwhile popularity: published in 1929, near the end of Bridges's life, it sold in huge numbers (for a volume of verse) and propelled its author, already Poet Laureate, to an O.M. (Order of Merit). I suspect that nowadays, if it is ever plucked from those charity shop shelves, it is rarely actually read. Having dipped into it once or twice, I must confess that I have found it more or less unreadable, but then I am no fan of the 'philosophical poem', which is what The Testament of Beauty very much is. It doesn't help that is written in Alexandrines (six-footed lines) – a form 'that, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along', as Pope put it. This is the kind of thing – 

Time eateth away at many an old delusion,

yet with civilization delusions make head;

the thicket of the people wil take furtiv fire

from irresponsible catchwords of live ideas,

      sudden as a gorse-bush from the smouldering end

of any loiterer’s match-splint, which, unless trodden out

afore it spredd, or quell’d with wieldy threshing-rods

wil burn ten years of planting with all last year’s ricks

and blacken a countryside. ’Tis like enough that men

ignorant of fire and poison should be precondemn’d

to sudden deaths and burnings, but ’tis mightily

to the reproach of Reason that she cannot save

nor guide the herd; that minds who else wer fit to rule

must win to power by flattery and pretence, and so

by spiritual dishonesty in their flurried reign

confirm the disrepute of all authority—

but only in sackcloth can the Muse speak of such things.

The odd spelling, by the way, is Bridges's own; he was an advocate of spelling reform, as well as being a poet, physician, staunch Anglican and hymnodist (his Yattendon Hymnal contained many hymns still sung today). He was also the man who brought the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins to public notice, respite his reservations about Hopkins's wildly unorthodox style and Catholic faith. The two men had been friends since Oxford days, and remained so. 
  One poem of Bridges that has lasted, if only as an anthology piece, is his 'London Snow' – 

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

      Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

      Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

      All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

      And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

      The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

      Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

      Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’

      With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

      When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

      For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

      But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

Which puts me in mind of Thomas Hardy's 'Snow in the Suburbs' –

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

But it's too early for winter poems. It is still, as I noted yesterday, very much autumn.